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Estimation is hard if you are stuck in the mindset that you have to make a point estimate. It's not hard at all if you are willing to be (and are allowed to be
by perl4ever 6y ago
Estimation is hard if you are stuck in the mindset that you have to make a point estimate.
It's not hard at all if you are willing to be (and are allowed to be) honest about the uncertainty of the inputs and calculate the uncertainty of the final result based on that.
It's true that people may demand precision that you can't give them. But at the same time, you know something and it is simple to compute what you know.
It's like Fermi estimation, that everyone hates so much and claims is so useless to interview for.
- valenterry 6y agoThis! If you estimate, estimate a distribution.
- taeric 6y agoEven distributions can fail in execution. I can't remember the name, but the joke rule that work expands to fit the time given to it. Such that, if all work expands to the max of the distribution, your time is easily set at the point of the max. Of course, this has been tried and doesn't work. The max time on many distributions is effectively infinity. Which, fails. For obvious reasons. And is why I assert you can really only talk of how long you are willing to work on something. Not how long it will take.